PHP's brighter future? On the "PHP the Right Way" project

http://blog.phpfog.com/2012/07/17/phps-brighter-future-on-the-php-the-right-way-project/

by lucperkins • 14 years ago

15 14 14 years ago

blog.phpfog.com

TylerE4• 14 years ago

I'm not going to waste time bashing PHP, that's a dead horse.

I'm just going to say that's it's a bit amusing that of the things he lists as "revelations" python has had since:

1. when dinosaurs roamed the earth (lambda)

2. 2003 (wsgi)

3. years ago (pip/easy_install)

4. ages (db-api)

rll3• 14 years ago

lambda was added to PHP in June 2000

TylerE4• 14 years ago

and in Python 1.0 in 1994.

Also, I can find no reference to PHP having anonymous functions/lambdas prior to 5.3, which is the version number given in both the linked article and PHP docs.

lucperkins• 14 years ago

My point wasn't that these things don't exist in other languages. Again, I'm not saying that PHP is objectively better than anything else. I know not to play that game. All that I'm doing is remaining steadfast in my claim that PHP doesn't deserve all the flak that it gets and that the language deserves consideration for a whole variety of use cases. That's all!

papsosouid3• 14 years ago

But if it isn't objectively better than similar languages in any way, then why does it deserve consideration? "You can work around and/or avoid most of the horrible problems in PHP" isn't a compelling argument in favour of PHP when every other language just doesn't have those horrible problems to begin with.

Legion• 14 years ago

PHP is still usable, sure, but there's just not many compelling reasons to do so, except in certain cases where it does offer a clear-cut advantage (low-friction, newb-friendly development and deployment of simple dynamic sites, for example).

I also find the "there's tons of spaghetti code in other languages" argument tiresome. That's true, but well-designed languages tend to help keep people off that path - or at least do a better job of doing so. PHP is not one of those languages, hence the need for a "PHP the Right Way".

As asserted in the post, PHP is indeed used on a ton of websites. Most of these websites were written when PHP was the best tool for the job. But languages evolve. Other languages have learned the lessons of PHP and improved upon it.

PHP has done a fine job of "modernizing" itself lately, but it's still stuck with a lower quality overall design than some of the alternatives, and those alternatives have kept moving forward at the same time too. It reminds me a lot of IE's "look, we've implemented that thing that the good browsers had 3 years ago" announcements. It's great that PHP is not standing still, and that continued improvement must be awesome for existing projects that are built on PHP.

But for me, starting new projects in 2012, there's zero compelling case for using PHP, just as there are many old languages that would have been "the" choice once upon a time, but are now replaced by better things.

ericclemmons• 14 years ago

> ... replaced by better things.

I thought we agreed that different solutions required different tools?

It's 2012 and all of our new apps our driven by PHP+Symfony2 with AngularJS on top. This combination has been huge for us (my company, I mean).

Maybe what should be answering is what "things" are better compared to PHP development with equal expertise. Like, what will RoR do for me that my existing setup won't? Why swap Symfony2 for ExpressJS and a multitude of NPM packages?

I'm alays eager, like most of the HN community, to be sold on the next great thing that makes my life easier, code cleaner, and site faster. But aside from language design, I haven't seen any apples-to-apples comparisons on the applications of these "better things."

PHP's brighter future? On the "PHP the Right Way" project

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